S02E20 - Aftermath

"Aftermath" is the twentieth episode of Season 2 of We Can Fix Pawbert. It picks up the morning after the rescue at the Central Weather Interface and opens the season's closing stretch. With Clawrence in custody and the siege over, the pack comes home to a wrecked Site Two and to the question of what happens now that the threat that brought Pawbert out of prison no longer exists.

Synopsis

Pawbert Lynxley wakes in Zootopia General the morning after being shot to find Luther asleep in the bedside chair. Nick and Judy arrive with coffee. Dr. Doespring clears Pawbert for discharge and puts full shoulder mobility at six to eight weeks of therapy. Judy takes the torn, bloodstained green sweater away to repair it. Pawbert's refusal and the rescue run on every screen in the city. The pack returns to Site Two, scorched and shot through but structurally sound, with the corkboard mementos, the heist trophy, and the album intact. In Zootopia Correctional, Milton watches coverage of Clawrence's arrest and of Pawbert being called a hero, then shuts off the screen; a few cells down, Cattrick weighs his own choice to help Luther. A message from Agent Ross closes out the active threat and the protection detail, so Pawbert must return to prison. Nick calls the law wrong; Pawbert names the crimes he chose and says he owes the time. Luther breaks down, and Pawbert holds him. His lawyer, Nikki Bramble, arrives with a proposal. Public opinion has shifted and Mayor Winddancer's approval is up, so a clemency petition could commute the sentence to time served plus one year. The pack finishes the repairs by nightfall. Pawbert lies awake beside a sleeping Luther; he still has most of his sentence to serve, and Nikki has not yet filed the petition.

Plot

Pawbert wakes at Zootopia General the morning after being shot. Luther is asleep in the chair beside the bed, still in the tactical gear he wore during the rescue, still holding his paw. Nick and Judy come in with coffee after a night in the waiting room. Dr. Doespring, a deer, checks the monitors and sets expectations for the shoulder: full mobility in six to eight weeks with consistent physical therapy, basic tasks manageable inside two weeks. She clears him for discharge the same day on the condition that someone helps him at home, which Luther and Nick both answer for. Judy finds the green sweater folded with his clothes, torn where the bullet went through and stiff with dried blood, and takes it away to be repaired.

They drive back in a ZSI vehicle past a city running one story on every screen: Clawrence's face, the weather wall, the broadcast footage of Pawbert refusing him, and the facility camera footage ZSI released after review, the shooting and the rescue included. Nick tells him he is famous again. Judy tells him it is a different kind of famous this time.

Site Two looks worse in daylight. Scorch marks climb the exterior wall, a window is boarded with raw plywood, and the door frame is splintered where the assault team worked at it with pry bars. Inside, furniture lies overturned, broken glass has been swept into corners and left there, and a tight cluster of bullet holes sits at chest height near the kitchen. The upgrades installed after the security audit held, and so did the building. The pack takes inventory. The corkboard is untouched: Charles's napkin with the pancake recipe on the back, his mother's recipe card, Maddie's card, and the squad Pawlaroid from the heist are all still pinned where they were. The heist trophy survived. Judy finds the album under the couch cushions, where it fell during the fight. The television survived with a diagonal crack across the panel and half the screen dark.

In the maximum security wing at Zootopia Correctional, Milton watches the same coverage from the edge of his bunk: his brother handcuffed into a ZSI vehicle, then the son he spent years erasing from family photographs, then Winddancer's statement about a Lynxley who chose Zootopia over power. He turns the screen off and sits in the dark. A few cells down, Cattrick watches the same loop with something closer to curiosity, turning over the choice he made when Luther came to him with nothing to bargain with and he handed over the location instead of using the desperation against him. He cannot tell whether it was right, only that it worked. When the coverage loops back to the start, he watches it again.

A message from Agent Ross reaches Pawbert at the safehouse: the active threat is closed out, Clawrence is in custody awaiting trial, no further threats identified. The extraction, the safehouse and the consulting arrangement were all a response to a specific threat, and with the threat gone Pawbert goes back to ZCF as soon as ZSI coordinates with the facility. Nick argues it, pointing out that Pawbert refused a terrorist on live television and was shot for it, then says outright that the law is wrong. Pawbert allows that it might be, and names what he did two years ago: poisoning Judy, attacking Nick on the ice, stabbing Nibbles and leaving Gary to freeze, with venom he prepared himself and nobody's orders behind any of it. The siege does not erase that, and he owes the time.

Luther says nothing through the whole exchange, and when Pawbert says his name twice, his voice breaks. The grief is wordless where the collapse in Cattrick's visiting room had been a plea: a year of visits through glass, the weeks of having Pawbert home, the blood on his paws on the control room floor, all of it arriving at once over a kitchen counter. Nick and Judy, who have watched Luther kill and keep moving, have never seen him like this, and they stay at the threshold holding each other's paws. Pawbert crosses the room one-armed and holds him until it passes. When Luther apologizes for it and says he should be stronger, Pawbert tells him that feeling it is the strong thing, and they trade their promise back and forth, Luther asking this time and Pawbert answering.

A knock brings the pack to its feet before anyone decides to move. It is Nikki Bramble, briefcase in paw, and what she has brought is not a legal problem. Clawrence moved too early with his broadcast, she says. He believed the voice authentication was already his, and instead he handed Zootopia a live view of a convicted criminal turning down power on the city's behalf. Advocacy groups, civil rights organizations and a few city council members have been calling her office all morning. Her proposal is clemency, though not a pardon: wiping a conviction Pawbert testified to earning would be inappropriate, while commuting what remains of the sentence sits within the Mayor's authority.

Winddancer's approval is up fifteen points since his press conference, and Nikki is candid that this cuts both ways. He has political reason to grant a commutation and an equally safe option in letting a convicted Lynxley serve out his term, and she will not predict which way he goes. If the petition succeeds, the sentence could come down to time served plus one year. Nothing is filed yet; the paperwork and the coordination with the Mayor's office will take a few days, and she wants to be moving before the news cycle does. On her way out she tells Pawbert the refusal was him being who she always argued he was, rather than a client making her job easier, and that he has four mammals fighting for him where everyone deserves one.

The repairs finish by evening. Nick boards the window, Judy returns the counters to the state Pawbert keeps them in, and Luther patches the drywall by the bedroom door. A second message from Ross reaches Luther, telling the pack they did right, and it lands less like a victory than an ending. That night Judy asks Nick when this ends, and he offers that maybe it does not end, maybe it only changes into something none of them has worked out yet. In the bedroom, Luther and Pawbert arrange themselves around the sling and stay awake in the dark, holding on to one more year, maybe less, until Luther's breathing evens out. Pawbert lies watching him, shoulder aching, and looks at the patch of fresh spackle by the door, paler than the paint around it and ridged where anyone who knows to look could find it, repaired without being hidden. The safehouse is full of repairs like that now, and he thinks he might be one himself.

Key Moments

• Pawbert wakes at Zootopia General to find Luther asleep at his bedside, still in the tactical gear from the rescue
• Dr. Doespring clears Pawbert for discharge and puts full shoulder mobility at six to eight weeks of physical therapy
• Judy takes the torn, bloodstained green sweater away to be repaired
• Coverage of the refusal, the shooting and the facility footage ZSI released after review runs on every screen in the city
• The pack takes inventory at Site Two; the building held, and the corkboard mementos, the heist trophy and the album all survived the assault
• Milton watches coverage of Clawrence's arrest and of Pawbert being called a hero, then shuts the screen off
• A few cells down, Cattrick weighs the choice he made when he gave Luther the location
• A message from Agent Ross closes out the active threat and the protection detail, which returns Pawbert to ZCF
• Nick argues the outcome is unjust; Pawbert names the crimes he chose and says he still owes the time
• Luther breaks down at the kitchen counter, and Pawbert holds him through it while Nick and Judy stand witness
• Nikki Bramble proposes a clemency petition: a commutation rather than a pardon, potentially to time served plus one year
• The pack finishes the safehouse repairs by nightfall

Key Lines

Characters Introduced

Locations

• Zootopia General Hospital - Recovery room; Pawbert's discharge
• Site Two - Damaged in the assault; repaired over the course of the day
• ZCF maximum security wing - Milton's cell and Cattrick's cell

Items

• Green sweater - Torn at the shoulder where the bullet went through, blood dried stiff; Judy takes it away to be repaired
• Corkboard - Intact, with Charles's napkin, the squad Pawlaroid, the recipe card and Maddie's card all still pinned
• Heist Trophy - Intact
• Album - Found under the couch cushions, fallen during the fight
• Television - Panel cracked diagonally during the assault; half the screen dark, still working